What a ham!

These past 90 days have been filled with firsts and lots of learning. In that time, we sold our house in Colorado and moved to our property in Yarnell, AZ. As a family of five, we went from 4500 square feet to 200 square feet as we prepare for the voyage. 4500 sq feet to 200 sq feet. That's not a typo.  Luckily, the kids are still pretty puny, so they don't take up a lot of space. This transition has been an important one for preparing for life aboard Mangas.

Dish duty in the trailer

One thing that you miss right away when living in a toy hauler trailer, or on a boat, is the ability to take a real shower. It becomes this huge thing, like you never realized it would. Standing in a little 2 feet by 1 foot space with a little drizzle nozzle that you have to constantly turn off while you soap off makes you long for water pressure. I have started to dream at night of finding extra funds in the cruising kitty that will allow for a hotel night stay so I can just stand in the shower from check-in until they kick me out. Then I wake up and go stand in my drizzle closet...

The other issue is just water in general. We had a well dug in 2003 and hit water at 580 feet with a 3 gallon a minute recharge rate. The static line is around 40 feet, which means the depth to which the recharge will fill after water is drawn. We had never tried to draw water from the well until we moved there. Thank goodness Mike is an engineer and so incredibly handy. He put 60 feet of pvc together, placed a $250 deep well pump on top of a 5-gallon bucket and plugged it all into a portable generator and Voila! water. You can't really appreciate unless you have been without water - but we cheered and clapped and hollered, we were all so happy. So twice a day, every day, we go run the pump for exactly 5 minutes and that fills the trailer tanks with water.

Hiking on the property in Yarnell. The massive fire last July burned every inch of the property, but the desert is coming back to life quickly.

In addition to figuring out water issues, we are learning to cook and clean with minimal resource use. We have propane for the stove and generator power for the microwave, but we have never been microwave cookers. To conserve propane, I have learned quite a bit about cooking with a pressure cooker. From potatoes to meatloaf, to soups and breads, pressure cookers are extremely versatile!

Last, but not least, as new lessons go, there was the issue of learning communications while at sea. We looked at satellite phones, but could not find an option that was affordable, or as it turned out, very reliable for our destination. We looked at using our current phones with an international calling plan - again, not affordable. However, there is an HF SSB radio onboard Mangas. We discovered that we could use the radio to send and receive emails, but the free service, winlink, is only available to ham operators. Oh crap! We do not have ham operator licenses. Looked online to find that there is only one more test for Technicians before we bug out, and it is in 6-days. Find a study guide! Find online app with question pool! Everything else on hold. The day before the test, Mike does more research on our radio on the boat. As we are driving south towards Oro Valley, Mike tells me that the frequency range on our radio is only available to General license holders (one step above Technician). Oh crap! We found a hotel, took a shower, found an online resource for the General question pool, took another shower, ordered Domino's and hunkered down for an all-night study-o-thon. Well, Mike did anyway. I took another shower and went to bed. The next day, we arrived at the test site. We both took Technician and Mike took the General. Both passed our tests, so we are now officially ham operators. Yeah! We'll write about the exact communication arrangements we make on the boat once we get that setup next week as well as provide our new call signs - just in case there are other hams out there we can chat with during our trip!

Selling a house, moving to AZ, learning to live in a small space, living completely off the grid, getting sailing certification and ham licenses.... crazy 90 days - can't wait to see what the next 90 days bring.

Next post....Why we absolutely LOVE Mexico!